In My Gallery
by Juxtaposie
Summary: Al converses with the King of Dreams. 3 of 7. Crossover with Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Spoilers.
1. Destiny

**Destiny **

There's a reason Izumi isn't dead.

* * *

Izumi sleeps.

It is the sleep of the unconscious, the half-dead, half-dreaming. Her body is weak, her heart is slowing, and her mind is broken, but her will shines even through the falling rain, to those with the eyes to see it, and her spirit is strong.

She dreams, and in her dreams she is running. A maze of thorny bushes grows before her, blocking the way with its forks, its twists and turns. She chooses path after path, and runs on, breathless, soundless. Her bare feet grow cold, then numb on the wet, stubble-like grass. Her shields and protections, coat, clothing, anger sarcasm, pain; each vanishes as she turns each corner until she is stripped bare and laid out plain as day for any chance passer-by to read as an open book.

She meets only one other. He stands on steps of grey stone at the maze's end, impossibly tall and cloaked in the simple brown robes of a hermit or monk. His face is hidden by the shadows of his hood, and he holds a thick, dusty, ancient book in his right hand. It is chained to his wrist.

He draws in breath to speak, and she feels it as if a soft wind were stirring the place around her. The old superstitions assail her as he breathes. Fears and beliefs she thought long dead fly to the forward of her mind, and she falls to her knees, bending her face to the stones, murmuring apologies and begging forgiveness and protection. She is a child again, under her mother's watchful eye, begging the gods for the things every little girl needs to be an acceptable woman: a husband who would endure her wickedness, children to carry on her husband's name, fortune to feed her children, and the like.

He hushes her, gently, and she obeys, though she will not face him.

"You should be dead," he speaks in a voice like the rustling of the dry pages in his ancient book.

"I deserve death," was all she could reply.

"Perhaps," he mutters, though she cannot help but hear him. "Perhaps not. But your task is not yet done."

She lifts her eyes finally, peers up at him and shakes her head. "I don't understand," she whispers, pleading silently with him to help her grasp the totality of her task.

"We have a limited amount of time so I must be brief," he continues. "Children will come to you, a pair of brothers, and they will ask for your care. They are motherless, and you are childless, so you will agree."

He says no more about the boys, and turns toward the east.

"You're life from this moment on will be nothing but pain and torment," he addresses her, though he is speaking toward to sky. "You will be forever reminded of what you lost and how you tried to regain it. Know this, woman: it is not for mortals to tempt Fate. You will spend the rest of your living years in agony as penance for this crime, and your only joy will be these children who will go as quickly from your arms as you will go from this world once they leave you."

She cries then, burying her face in her hands and weeping, and the robed man's voice seems to soften as he approaches her.

"Child, this life is not the last," he says. "It is not even the first. It simply _is_."

The surroundings grow dark, the maze behind and the columns before vanishing in the absence of light. Only the stairs remain, and even they grow misty around her.

"Our time is done," the man says, and turns away from her.

Izumi reaches out to him, rising, begging him to stay, to speak more of what will become of her and these children.

"You know what you need to," he says to her, never turning back. "And when you wake you will not remember even that. Resolve yourself now to do as I have said, or you will not know the boys when they come to you."

She makes her resolve, and casts it in stone on her memory: stone that is shattered into sand and washed away as she awakes to the thundering skies, the rain pouring down over her prone form. She lies for a moment and looks into the clouds, blinking through the water that falls in her eyes. Lightning crackles, and she rolls to her side as blood wells up in her throat, choking the air out of her lungs, leaving her to cough and curl around the ball of pain just below her stomach.

Pulling herself to her feet, half walking, half tripping, Izumi makes her way toward the shore, Destiny's words fading from her memory.

* * *

Satisfactory? I had fun writing Destiny. 


	2. Death

**Death **

The one person we all meet in time gives Maes a final gift.

* * *

After the initial burst of pain –hazy, yet vivid, and red as…red as the blood blooming from his chest- he felt everything as if in memory. He knew he was falling, or maybe he had already fallen and he was remembering, and that thing that looked like his wife, his beautiful, adoring Gracia, stared down at him with a cold smile on its lips. A dull ache settled into his chest, and the cold ground came up to meet his back, catching him gently, and then in the blink of an eye it was over and-

And he was watching it happen, like a dream. He stood over his body, watching the angry red splotch grow across his coat, watching the thing that had ended his life shed its cruel disguise and walk off into the night, leaving him for dead.

He looked around then, at the homes and shops, the streetlamp and the telephone booth and the stars. There was a woman standing off to the right, just behind him.

"I guess I'm dead," he said slowly, because he could think of nothing else to say.

"Good guess," she said gently, sidling up beside him to look down at his body.

"How about you?" he asked, turning to face her. Maybe if he drew this out, he would awake and find it to be no more than a bad dream. "Are you dead too?"

She just smiled up at him from a face as pale as snow and said, "No Maes, and this isn't a dream."

He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, still watching in morbid fascination as the blood began to pool around him on the concrete. An odd, cold feeling had settled over him. His mind was going numb with the implications.

"I have a baby girl," he said quietly.

The woman sighed and put a hand on his shoulder.

"She's only five," he added, trying to keep the hysteria he was feeling from creeping into his voice.

"Come on," the woman said gently, pulling him away from his body, walking him down the street. "I'll walk with you a little ways."

Away from his physical shell, things were easier to bear. The blood on the concrete and the blank look in his eyes were the things his nightmares were made of- had been made of, anyways. Away from that, it was easy to pretend he was walking home, that he had offered to escort his companion to her door because the hour was so late, and it was, after all, the military's job to keep the citizens safe.

"It's not all that bad, you know," she said, smiling back at him as she led him through a maze of dark alleyways and lamp-lit streets. "Everyone dies. It's just a matter of when."

"Somehow that doesn't comfort me," Maes answered coldly, staring at the paving stones.

"Look at it this way," she quipped, drawing even with him and dropping an arm around his shoulders as they walked. "Your death will set in motion a series of events that will save this country from it's until-recently inevitable self-destruction. Small compensation at this exact moment, I know, but you'll see things differently once you've been dead a few decades."  
Maes winced, and then let out a dejected sigh and resigned himself to his fate. It seemed there was no escaping it.

The woman stopped, pulling him to a halt with her, and looked up into his face. She tilted her head a fraction to the left and studied him, her wild black hair falling across her dark eyes.

"I like you," she pronounced finally, nodding to herself. "And I'm going to do you a small favor, since you're being such a good sport about this. You wouldn't believe the fight some people put up when they find they're due for the next life."

Maes raised an eyebrow at her, unable to think of a single favor she could do for him now that his life had ended.

"You'll see in a bit," she spoke up, hooking her thumbs in the belt-loops of her black jeans and ambling down the alleyway. "We've got a ways to go, yet."

He started after her, and she turned to him, adding, "You're lucky things are quiet tonight. Normally I wouldn't take the time out to do this, but the world's as peaceful as it's ever going to be, and you lived a good life and all…"

"Good enough, I suppose," he murmured.

"Don't beat yourself up about this," she advocated. "I know it's hard, but I can tell you're the kind of man who's going to worry more about your friends and family than you are about yourself. Whether it's a consolation or a discomfort, you should know they're going to be all right."

"How do you know that?" he couldn't help asking.

She just shrugged, smiled lazily back at him, and continued on her way.

They walked for longer than Maes had ever walked in his entire life, farther than he had ever been on his own two feet. They walked farther than time was able to take them, covering miles and miles at their slow pace in just a few hours: a journey that would have taken days for a car. He did not grow tired, and this strange woman was as good a companion as any he had ever known.

"So what should I call you?" he asked idly, when they had exhausted their store of anecdotes about career waitresses in greasy diners.

"I've got a lot of names, but I generally prefer Death," she answered after a moment's thought.

"Very forward," he said, nodding. "To the point. Keeps the less intelligent ones from getting confused, I imagine."

She laughed a little, and nodded.

"Where are we going, anyways?" he couldn't help asking, after it seemed a small eternity had passed.

"There are a couple of kids you knew, a pair of brothers," she said, stepping over a branch that had fallen onto the dirt road. "I just thought maybe you'd like to wave them off for the last time. It's going to be awhile before you see them again."

Maes could not help but smile at this. "Yeah, I guess I would like that."

He stopped suddenly, and she stopped as well, looking back at him.

"Listen," he began. "I… I know you're probably not supposed to tell people these things, but seeing as I'm already dead, and I couldn't possibly tell him or anything…" he looked up at her momentarily, and she nodded for him to continue. "You see, this friend of mine, he's got a bit of a reckless streak in him. He doesn't really think before he jumps into trouble, and he's got this crazy knack for attracting unwanted attention – honest to God, the only reason he's still alive is because his underlings watch him so closely."

She nodded again, gesturing for him to keep walking even as he spoke.

"I guess what I want to know," Maes continued, "is will I be seeing him any time soon?"

Death favored him with a small smile and said, "Roy Mustang has a good many things to accomplish in this life before he moves onto the next one," and she would speak no more on the subject.

They arrived, finally, at a train station: one of those small ones that was more for the town that was connected to it, however distantly, by the small dirt path than it was for the people on the train.

"The sun will be coming up soon," Death announced, and indeed the horizon was already pink with the prospect of dawn. "I've got a quick errand to run, so I'm just gonna leave you here. Theirs is the second train coming through here. Shouldn't be more than a few hours from now."

She left him on the platform, and took off down the dirt path.

"I'll be back before noon," she called back over her shoulder. In minutes she was out of sight.

Maes sighed, took off his jacket, and paced to cold paving stones; forty-eight paces from one end to the other. He spent hours like this, or maybe just minutes (time was slipping away form him - he could feel it), but the whistle of the first train broke him from his reverie.

It was a freight train, with only a little red caboose in the back. The faces of men, women, and children peered out from the windows, but they looked right past him, out to the countryside beyond. The train did not stop, and Maes continued pacing.

He fished a photograph out of his pocket, and gazed down at it fondly: his little girl smiled back, covered in mud from head to toe. Only her eyes, blue like her mother's broke the shades of brown.

Strange, that he should be so worried about Roy, and not Elysia. If things continued as they were, soon the whole country would be in turmoil, and his wife and daughter would be no safer than the soldiers hiding in Central while the war raged on in the east.

But Death had said his passing would prevent that.

And besides, Elysia had a wonderful, loving mother to take care of her. Roy had only his thoughts to keep him company.

"And now who's going to make sure he finds a decent wife?" Maes muttered to the picture. Elysia just continued to smile.

A second train whistle caught his attention, and Maes shoved the picture in his pocket. He left his hand there, wrapped around the keepsake, as the train whooshed by.

For a few moments he thought perhaps Death had been mistaken. Perhaps they were on a different train. Hell, they could have been sitting on the _other side_ of this one, and he still wouldn't have seen them.

A glint of sunlight through one of the windows caught his eye. Something large and pewter-colored was sitting in the second to the last car of the train. It was shaped like armor, and across from it sat a smallish young man whose blonde hair hung to his shoulders in a braid. He was looking to his left, where Maes knew there was a pretty young woman with her long hair pulled into a ponytail, a piece of pie clutched firmly in one hand.

* * *

Edward Elric stared blankly out the window toward the upcoming train station as Winry continued to defend Lt. Colonel Hughes. Her voice had taken on the small, girlish whine she used when she knew she was right and that he wouldn't believe her anyway, and Ed had just tuned her voice out when a vision came to him.

Time slowed as their car passed the station, and there on the end, one hand in his pocket, smiling smugly and waving, was the Lieutenant Colonel. There was a certain finality in his movement that startled Ed, though he did not show it to his companions, and as soon as the vision had come it was gone.

Ed leaned out the window, and looked back at the station.

Nothing

"Ed?" Winry asked at the confused expression on his face.

"Did you see something, brother?" Al pressed when Ed did not reply.

Finally Ed said "No," and consumed the last bit of his pie piece.

He could say one thing for certain about the Lieutenant Colonel: he had married a damn good cook.

* * *

Death returned at eleven o'clock sharp, and they walked together out into the fields, away from the roads and the cars and the people. A tall tree grew in the distance, but Death did not approach it, and with a smile she turned to Maes.

"It's time," she said gently, and held out her arms.

"For what?" Maes asked, fearful now that the end had truly come.

"Not the end," she corrected. "Another beginning."

"Where are we going?" he wanted to know. She believed he had lived a good life, but that did not necessarily mean he was not damned for all eternity. Or perhaps it did. Her silence did not trouble him, in any case.

"How are we getting there?" he asked as his final appeal, looking around at the scenery. "Do you have a chariot pulled by skeleton horses? I've always wanted to see one of those."

She laughed and then stepped closer to him. Her arms came up around his shoulders, and her breath was cool and calming against his ear as she stood on her toes and whispered to him, "I'm going to carry you."

_Fin_

* * *

I like Death. 


	3. Dream

**Dream**

Al converses with the King of Dreams

* * *

Al found it funny that he could still sleep. Even funnier was that he chose to although it was not at all necessary. 

Funniest of all was that he dreamed.

Most nights he dreamt of his body: being in it, using it, feeling it climb, fall, break, run, trip, swim. There was nothing he hadn't done, no hardship he hadn't endured, no adventure left incomplete. He knew that his lungs should burn when he ran, that he would sweat in the sun and grow thirsty in the heat. He knew the ache of his ankles when he jumped out of trees, and the burn of his knees when he fell on the steps of his house.

Once he dreamt about kissing Winry. Even without a face of flesh, he could not keep the blush away upon waking. Ed saw (because Ed saw everything), and when he found out the reason he hadn't let it go for days.

Al never dreamt about the stone, or the transmutation, or chimeras. He had never dreamt about the terrible things in the world: the ones they'd seen and the ones Mustang liked to fling at them when he'd been drinking too much and they were annoying him.

That night, the dream was strange. It wasn't normal. It was a real dream. It was a dream Ed would have (flying hippos, tutus with legs in red pumps that danced the can-can on the sun). Al dreamt of the mundane things, and of things lost. He dreamt of his home, and his mother. He dreamt of being normal, and of Ed being whole.

Not tonight.

Tonight he sprouted wings and went flying around the world, faster than light could travel across space, faster than the sun's rising, until he was far out in the darkness and there was nothing but the light from the stars to keep him company.

There was a man there, sitting on a small moon (so small it was no bigger than an office desk). He wore black like the sky wore the night, and his dark eyes glittered like precious stones left laying in the moonlight. He was slender and handsome, and though he sat cross-legged on the surface of the moon, he had a regal bearing.

"**You do not visit me often, little soul**," the man said, his tone somewhere between congenial and indifferent.

Al nodded, suddenly feeling _very_ young, and more than a bit bashful. It was true that he dreamt whenever he slept, but he did not sleep all that often.

The wings began to recede into his back, and he landed himself beside the man on the moon before he fell out of the sky. His legs dangled off the edge, out into the nothingness of the space around them.

"It's so pretty out here," Al said into the silence. "You can't see this many stars even in the desert."

"**You can't see this many stars anywhere on Earth**," the man murmured, eyes never leaving the twinkling lights that surrounded them.

"I'm Alphonse," the boy offered, looking toward the quiet man, legs drumming against the sides of the small moon as he kicked his bare feet.

"**Morpheus**," the quiet man responded, taking a quick, almost appraising glance at the child who now sat beside him.

Al smiled.

Morpheus did not smile back, but returned his gaze to the burning pinpoints of light.

"I like it here," Al observed casually, as most ten year-olds were wont to do when a silence stretched on too long (and never minding that he was actually 14, though he felt even older).

The King of Dreams made no reply.

"It's nice," the child continued simply. "Peaceful. Sort of like all your problems were too heavy to fly away with you, and they're all stuck to the ground somewhere down there."

"**You don't find the darkness unsettling?**" Morpheus asked, because most children, human or not, were terrified of the vast black expanse.

"I'm not afraid of the dark," Al said, and it was true. There were far too many terrifying things out there to be afraid of something so trivial as a dark night. "I kind of like it," he continued. "It's easier to hide in, if you know how."

"**It is**," Morpheus conceded with a small nod.

A little way out to their right a comet trudged past, it's voyage slow, as if floating through molasses.

"My brother would like it here," Al said, and then asked blithely, "Do you have any brothers?"

"**Three**," the quiet man responded. "**And four sisters**."

Al let out a low whistle. "The dinner table must have been crowded at your house."

The dinner table was never crowded at Dream's house. While Dream did tolerate his siblings, and could even admit to enjoying the company of a select few, he could not stand to have all of them in the same realm. The bickering of the younger Endless did nothing but irritate him, and Death's mothering (how odd, to say that Death was motherly) and Destiny's quiet presence only served to agitate the tension between each of them.

"Bad memories of home?" Al asked as Morpheus' face became, if it were possible, even more calm and withdrawn.

"**No**," Dream answered, because the memories held no emotion to him. They were simply memories. He was irked that arguments seemed to crop up whenever they had a family reunion, but that was simply the nature of the existence of the Endless. They were foils for each other; stark black backdrops on which they could each perform their uniquely colored tasks.

"I don't remember my home," Al said sadly, looking down at his hands, clasped together in his lap. "Well, sometimes I do, but the memories are fuzzy… like I'm watching a play through foggy glass, and even though I've seen it before I don't remember the faces of the players, or the lines, or how the story ends, or anything."

"**You remember**," Morpheus insisted, though it seemed more of a casual observance. "**Your dreams remember**."

Al screwed up his face as of his solving of a complex mathematical equation had suddenly been rudely interrupted by something as unclear and blasé as philosophy.

"How does that make sense?" the child queried in a tone that Dream new all too well: the tone of the rational, logical world, the Scientist. It was the tone of one who did not answer to any god because he did not believe in any god.

Almost as an afterthought, Al added, "They're just dreams," forgetting that he was dreaming.

Those distant, burning eyes that had been so intent on the surrounding stars now swung around to lock on the boy sitting nearby. Al felt, very keenly, the anger and indignity in that stare, even as Morpheus' face stayed blank. The child knew immediately that not only had he strayed onto holy ground; he had desecrated it in one of the worst ways possible. He shrank under the stare, eyes falling again to his lap, shoulders hunching in as his knees drew together and his legs crossed at the ankle.

"**All things have power**," Morpheus growled in a voice as smooth as glass.

"Even dreams?" Al asked, steeling his fear to look up into the eyes now bearing down heavily upon him.

"**_Especially_ dreams**," the regal man intoned, as if speaking from experience.

Al looked away again, knowing the doubt he still felt was pouring out through his pupils.

Morpheus seemed to sigh, an exhale that caused the little moon to tremble and moved the stars gently in its wake like tiny flowers floating in a rippling pool. Then he reached out and put a cool, whit hand on Al's shoulder, as if to console him.

Al turned to stare the strange man, and then cried out – soundlessly, wordlessly – as Morpheus pushed him backwards, off the moon, out into the dark, empty space. There were no wings this time, and the stars had all disappeared, and Al knew that he would fall forever.

Then he woke up.

* * *

AN: Wow, so I'm not completely dead. I would have had this done ages ago, but Dream wouldn't start talking in the story, and he wouldn't shut up in my head. This one is a little more random and a little less sensible than the others, but I like it - so there! And yes, I realize that three sisters and four brothers means Dream has 7 siblings... but I counted Desire twice. Cause I felt like it. 


End file.
